I immediately teleported to my armory and returned with the
first thing I could find—a rusting, curving dagger. I handed to him and ordered, "Do
it."

He appeared to be far more nervous about this than I had
anticipated. "Are you…absolutely
certain you want me to do this?" he asked.

"Yeah, come on, hurry up," I said.

"I don't understand how this will help."

"You don't have to. Just do what I'm telling you and
kill me."

"Very well," he sighed, and I felt the flesh of my
throat split open just beneath my Adam's apple.
My last thought as my consciousness faded out was that I should have
thought to take my clothes off first because the bloodstains would never come
out of this shirt.

I died yet again.

I suppose I could have avoided it, but this time, I actually
meant to die—for a change. I was hoping that, with no other recourse,
Conrad would be able to supply me with some much needed intelligence during
another short visit to the weird little hospital room in Heaven.

I awoke in that same room, again feeling famished and
impotent and wonderfully human. I waited
for the red light bulb mounted over the door to flick on. A moment later, my great grandfather entered
for our third heavenly postmortem interaction.

"You should really get better at not dying," he
murmured casually, preparing the injection without so much as a hello.

"No, I died on purpose this time," I assured
him. "I needed to talk to
you."

His entire demeanor changed with frightening speed. He gripped me tightly around the bicep and
hissed through his teeth, "What is wrong with you? Are you crazy?!"